Probably a combination of things: time, exercise, abstinence of toxins, and adaptogens particular to your needs. I personally do well on green tea, magnesium and turmeric. These supplements not only modulate dopamine, but I have also observed a delicate connection between dopamine and glutamate with regards to mental states and normal well-being.

What exactly do you mean by upregulating? What are you trying to achieve? More info would be useful. If you just mean simply having more dopamine in your brain to feel better, more focused etc - it is a little more complicated than that. For example many dopamine agonists will not make you feel "wired" this is a kind of dopamine upregulation (agonists binding to dopamine sites).

No disrespect intended to the above poster, but dopamine makes a poor choice in agonist therapy.

It is easy to suppress, difficult to restore, and inversely related to acetylcholine and glutamate. If you take a wrong turn with dopamine, you are sure to have problems elsewhere too.

Lack of dopamine has a reputation in recovering drug addicts for blocking joy and causing agitation. While these are likely the result of permanent damage and yours a more benign and reversible over the counter supplement, still it begs the question, why go down the wrong road at all?

No disrespect intended to the above poster, but dopamine makes a poor choice in agonist therapy.

It is easy to suppress, difficult to restore, and inversely related to acetylcholine and glutamate. If you take a wrong turn with dopamine, you are sure to have problems elsewhere too.
Lack of dopamine has a reputation in recovering drug addicts for blocking joy and causing agitation. While these are likely the result of permanent damage and yours a more benign and reversible over the counter supplement, still it begs the question, why go down the wrong road at all?

Has there ever been a case of permanent dopamine damage? I just read a study that long term methamphetamine users recovery normal dopamine levels within only 90 days.

Has there ever been a case of permanent dopamine damage? I just read a study that long term methamphetamine users recovery normal dopamine levels within only 90 days.

Just because they recover neurotransmitter levels does not mean they recover full hedonistic capacity and that there is no damage. Many complain years later of not experiencing joy at family get-togethers, suggesting aggravation of a mental condition. Maybe it is there attitude and social stigmas, but I think cold hard neurological damage plays a role.

As well structural changes are incurred that may reverse only over the course of years and are not totally obvious, white vs grey matter, glucose metabolism, mitochondrial health, etc etc. While not technically permanent, it's still annoying enough for the person dealing with it to think so.

There are so many subtypes of dopamine receptors and so many ways they can get stuck down, that just looking at overall concentration you may miss many details which would otherwise explain persistent symptoms.

Meth may not even be the best example here, as it rapidly depletes dopamine into non-toxic concentrations and enters and elastic regime. I would look at Levadopa and Cocaine instead, as they are likelier suspects of permanent damage. I am sure chemicals used in wars could do worse.

If you look at cocaine, there are studies linking it to cannabis. At least in mice models where we don't complicate things with social factors and stuff. In those models if you smoke cannabis for a while, quit that for years, you do cocaine once and you are much likelier than a cannabis-naive person to get hooked. Why? Because of persistent changes in DAT and structure, FosB and who knows what, your brain is literally primed to dopamine.

There are similar studies in rodents showing that even at 60 or 90 days of abstinence, a single dose is enough to "reset" tolerance back to good old binge days. Just when you think you're making progress, gah...

So even if levels always come back, which they might not with decades of abuse in old age, there are many other problems to watch out for, the least of which are structural morphology and altered metabolism. And therefore street drugs are to be discouraged.

Yes that is what I meant. Upregulating dopamine without having the tolerance consequences, may have to stick to things like Tyrosine which would be rate limited thus never going above "natural" limits, but any sort of dopamine releaser or agonist brings about tolerance rapidly, so i'm not entirely sure exactly what upregulating dopamine means. Adaptogens might be your answer there.

Also I think what do you exactly define neurological damage is also key here (regarding amphetamines and meth), somebody who has recovered from amphetamine abuse may be neurological healthy by almost all standards, but the receptor changes in the brain may have subsisted to the point of permanence, leaving a constant state of lethargy - is this considered brain damage - I would say not according to my understanding of medical definition, everything is still working fine, but the incentives of the brain have been greatly altered by consistently high levels of dopamine.

Tyrosine will certainly cause rapid tolerance! What's more, it has never had for me the pinpoint, clinical effects to which others ascribe Adderall.

Have you ever tried red ginseng? This is a good choice for most average ADHD invidividuals, as it lessens the conversion of both tyrosine to dopamine (TH) and of dopamine to norepinephrine (DBH), thereby unpregulating everything downstream, gradually restoring faculties, and promoting a calm focus. Please note not all patients respond equally to equal medicine and the ginseng bottle may be something you end throwing away. But if that is to be the case, it should only point us closer in the direction of Truth and there is nothing to Fear.

Ironically tea (again, needs to be special tea can't just dismiss this with lipton or pure leaf) may help with some of the physical ADHD symptoms: arterial hypertension, indigestion, and hyperactivity. There is an unpublished report on ADHD and theanine, but I'm unable to find any hard facts. In lieu of that you can just take my word for it, that I have never had a cup of fine Japanese tea and then suddenly been less focused or less able to work. It doesn't work that way for me.

The problem with Lipton and Pure Leaf is you aren't getting hardlyany theanine or catechins, and so you may as well just mix caffeine with water and a drop of green food coloring and yeah it's pretty much inferior to Starbucks coffee, which at least has a chance of being fresh and nutritive.

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